Targets: Please tell me this is a joke

[WillyKern69]

How come they are all White? Does diversity end at gun ownership?

WK

[Evan Thomas]

Originally Posted by pax

Anyway. On that film, there were several different types of shoot situations, including one with a child who looked to be around 10 years old who first shot someone else, then started shooting toward the viewer.

That was a "shoot" scene.

It shook me up.

But -- is someone less dead when shot by a child rather than adult?

The youngest multi-victim school shooter was 11 years old.

It's human, and a good thing, to be shaken up by that.

But there's a "teachable moment" here, I think, and it has to do with our tendency to classify people, a priori, as "good guys" or "bad guys."

It's sort of a giveaway that Blaine Cooper, in that phone conversation, expresses outrage that the people shown on the targets are "real gun owners:" he's basically assuming that people who don't fit some stereotype are automatically "good guys," and that it's wrong to train cops to overcome their own stereotyping in this regard.

Many of the posters in this thread are making the same assumption. We might try turning this on its head by picturing the sorts of people we do think it's OK to put on targets. People who are dressed in certain ways, perhaps? (Think hoodies here...) People of color, perhaps, especially Arab-looking people?

Again, I realize I'm on delicate ground with this, but I think there's a lot of unconscious racism and classism underlying the outrage over these targets.

[pax]

We might try turning this on its head by picturing the sorts of people we do think it's OK to put on targets.

Hmmm. That is a fascinating little side trip, right there! Thank you....

You know, there might be another use for mug shots of convicted murderers.

pax

[WW2]

... We are training to shoot someone just because they have a gun. I would like to see "no shoot" targets of these same people that have guns in their hands as well.

If I am defending my home and police officers enter and see me with my shotgun, carbine, or handgun are they allowed to kill me? If they have been trained to not hesitate and shoot me just because I am holding a gun are they to be given a free pass?

I would like to see a shoot house training situation where both good guys and bad guys have guns. This is a far more difficult test of determining shoot - no shoot than just automatically shooting a target because it has a gun. Imagine the police killing the 12 year old who recently defended himself and his sister from home invaders with an AR15 just because the kid had a gun in his hands.

[dajowi]

This is from the DHS website:

Active Shooter: What You Can Do Course

DHS has developed an Independent Study Course titled Active Shooter: What You Can Do. This course was developed to provide the public with guidance on how to prepare for and respond to active shooter crisis situations."

"Recognize potential workplace violence indicators"

I'm sorry but I thought the Department of Homeland Security's job was countering terrorism. I don't view workplace violence as terrorism.

[Twmaster]

My instict after seeing some of these 'targets' is to be outraged.

Ok, I get it, anybody can go all kooked out and be a danger to LE and civilians alike.

The one that bothered me the most is the woman in a robe with a handgun. The impression I get is she's defending her home. LE's are supposed to 'not hesitate' and just shoot her? Really?

Somebody else said these targets are intended to desensitize officers to the idea of shooting civilians. I'm beginning to think that may be a huge part of it.

While I do not own a tinfoil cap I cannot help but wonder if the DHS is indeed getting ready for a civil uprising.

[Evan Thomas]

Originally Posted by dajowi

I'm sorry but I thought the Department of Homeland Security's job was countering terrorism. I don't view workplace violence as terrorism.

The Department of Homeland Security is a cabinet-level department that was put in place after 9/11, it's true, but countering terrorism was never their only mission. Several formerly independent agencies were placed within DHS, from FEMA, to the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (!), to Customs and Immigration (now Immigration and Customs Enforcement -- ICE is such an awesomely cool acronym ). It's not clear that all, or most, of these changes were for the better.

I haven't looked at the course you mention yet, but I did watch the video on the DHS site on how to protect yourself from an active shooter. It's all pretty good advice on hiding, evacuating, and how not to get shot by police arriving on the scene. But it mentions "challenging the shooter" as strictly a last resort, and shows a guy in a white shirt picking up a truly fearsome-looking pair of scissors from his desk...

Originally Posted by Twmaster

The one that bothered me the most is the woman in a robe with a handgun. The impression I get is she's defending her home. LE's are supposed to 'not hesitate' and just shoot her? Really?

Just think of her as a Desperate Housewife.

[pax]

Originally Posted by Twmaster

The one that bothered me the most is the woman in a robe with a handgun. The impression I get is she's defending her home. LE's are supposed to 'not hesitate' and just shoot her? Really?

Originally Posted by Vanya

Just think of her as a Desperate Housewife.

Plenty of people caught up in a domestic violence cycle turn around and attack the responding officers.

pax

[Evan Thomas]

Originally Posted by pax

Plenty of people caught up in a domestic violence cycle turn around and attack the responding officers.

Just so; victims even have been known to "defend" their abusers by doing so.

And while we may admire the courage of an officer who, for instance, talks down a child who's wielding a gun, and so defuses the situation, we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that the officer is putting his or her own safety at risk by choosing not to shoot. Police have every right to put their own safety first if someone is pointing a gun at them -- as do we.

[Dr Big Bird PhD]

Just so; victims even have been known to "defend" their abusers by doing so.

And while we may admire the courage of an officer who, for instance, talks down a child who's wielding a gun, and so defuses the situation, we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that the officer is putting his or her own safety at risk by choosing not to shoot. Police have every right to put their own safety first if someone is pointing a gun at them -- as do we.

What I'm worried about is the rationale of these situations being packaged with "gun owners" or "civilians" in general.

[North East Redneck]

I find these targets disturbing. I do not believe that the subjects depicted on the targets represent a large portion of what LEOs see in their day to day lives. There is only one race of people, and that aside, how many pregnant women/little boys/ and older sisters are actually active shooters that engage in a firefight with LE? Not many I believe. Rare occurrence. These targets just don't feel right to me.

[patriotic]

And while we may admire the courage of an officer who, for instance, talks down a child who's wielding a gun, and so defuses the situation, we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that the officer is putting his or her own safety at risk by choosing not to shoot. Police have every right to put their own safety first if someone is pointing a gun at them -- as do we.

In this age of home invasions I can understand a LEO breaking in a door of a house and facing the homeowner with a gun. Is that homeowner a criminal or a person exercising his right to self-defense? Of course the assumption is the LEO has announced who he is and has requested access to the home. If it is just a bust the door down entry then I would hope the homeowner would take this threat down. Remember these LEOs do wear body armor so it is not an absolute threat from the law abiding citizen. My God man how could you live with yourself shooting a pregnant woman or kid?

[Evan Thomas]

Originally Posted by North East Redneck

Rare occurrence.

That's the point. These aren't the people police expect to be pointing guns at them, but that doesn't mean that they're any less threatening if they do. An officer who hesitates when confronted with a harmless-looking geezer with a shotgun may not go home that night.

Let me rephrase my earlier question, or exercise: if you (plural you, I'm not singling anyone out) believe that it's OK for police to train with targets showing realistic photos of people, what are acceptable characteristics (age, gender, race, clothing, grooming, attractiveness..) for the people depicted to have? How would police know that they're not "regular gun owners" who shouldn't be shot?

And for the sake of argument, let's assume that one of the purposes of this is to train for "rare occurrences."

C'mon... I dare you all to answer.

Or do you think that training with realistic targets is never OK?

[sigcurious]

if you (plural you, I'm not singling anyone out) believe that it's OK for police to train with targets showing realistic photos of people, what are acceptable characteristics (age, gender, race, clothing, grooming, attractiveness..) for the people depicted to have?

They should all be depicted as clowns, because we all know clowns are evil and trying to take over the world.

Seriously though, I think a good training variation would be realistic/photo targets of all types, from people(of all types) just standing there, to people holding objects, to people pointing guns as depicted by the targets in question, as well as people with guns, but not raised/pointed at the shooter. The random object and just holding guns would be no shoots, guns raised/aimed would be shoot targets.

It seems that one thing some people are over looking is that these images are not just of people holding guns, they're of people pointing guns at the potential trainee.

[Evan Thomas]

Evil clowns... yes.

It seems that one thing some people are over looking is that these images are not just of people holding guns, they're of people pointing guns at the potential trainee.

I don't think anyone is overlooking that. The point of the targets is clear from the name the company gives them: No More Hesitation targets. The purpose is to train police not to hesitate to shoot when anyone is pointing a gun at them.

The company now has a statement on their home page that includes the following:

We apologize for the offensive nature of our "No More Hesitation" products. These products have been taken offline due to the opinions expressed by so many, including members of the law enforcement community.

This product line was originally requested and designed by the law enforcement community to train police officers for unusually complex situations where split-second decisions could lead to unnecessary loss of life.

However, there's still a pregnant woman target available. She's also pointing a gun at the viewer, but... she looks sorta whacked.

[pax]

My God man how could you live with yourself shooting a pregnant woman or kid?

How could you live with yourself if you had the means to stop the murders of a dozen people, and you didn't?

A law enforcement officer might be called to the scene of a school shooting -- one where the murderer is himself just a child. That LEO should have thought their own ethics through ahead of time. The other option is for the LEOs to stand there watching children get murdered while they sort through their own inner demons about using a weapon against a child murderer.

Remember the awful Andrea Yates case, a woman who murdered all five of her own children. If a woman like that was pregnant, and threatening the lives of her children -- would the life of the baby in her womb somehow be worth more than the lives of the toddlers she would murder if the responding officer did not stop her immediately? Sometimes, the best course of action, the one with the least-horrible outcome on some coldhearted scale of injustice, is still a horrible situation that leads to pain for everyone involved.

Saving lives does not always come without cost.

If you carry a concealed weapon and have ever pictured yourself being the hero and saving the day, try putting yourself in one of those situations. Think it through.

• If you took a job where you would have a duty to act, and might get called to such a scene, would you just stand there with your ethics spinning wildly while people are getting killed?
  
  
• Would you deal with such questions ahead of time as much as you could, so that you would have the capacity to save lives in a nightmare situation?
  
  
• Would you ignore such questions, figuring that you'd somehow steel yourself to do the necessary thing even though you literally could not even bring yourself to even think about shooting a paper representation of that thing?

We send law enforcement into situations like that. We expect them to deal with whatever they encounter, whether it's a domestic crisis, someone gone insane, a school shooting, a schizophrenic killer who happens to be barely into puberty... Every single person who has been through law enforcement training should know where their limits are on questions like that. Their training should have forced them to confront their own nightmare scenarios, so that they do not freeze, unable to act, when innocent lives are at stake.

We aren't talking about training officers to "just automatically shooting a target because it has a gun." We are talking about giving them the ability to make that choice in time for the choice to do any good. That's why those targets are so upsetting on such a visceral level. Nobody wants to make that choice. Nobody wants to picture making that choice. Everyone wants to live in a world where such choices are never needed.

How old will the next school shooter be?

pax

[SPEMack618]

In regards to kids...

In the big sandbox, I saw a kid, who according to Doc was about 14/15, after he had been hit by us. His AK was at his feet and the old man with him, I'm guessing he was his Dad or Grand-dad, didn't drop his Enfield until there were four M-4s pointed at him and Doc was approaching slowly with his hands up and big bag with a red cross on it visible.

[pax]

That sounds like a hard memory to carry around. Thanks for your service.

pax

[North East Redneck]

These targets appear to depict only caucasian people. The DHS has presented caucasian people as a threat to national security in the past few years. Veterans and other legal gun owners have been referred to as domestic terrorists. Political beliefs leaning to the right have also been demonized as of late. These targets seem to depict a similar thought pattern. Personally, I find them disgusting. How many cases have there been of innocent people killed by LE "because they had a gun", only to find out that the person in fact had no gun. I feel that these targets will only lead to more incidents of this type. Did Lon Horiuchi mistake the baby for a gun through his scope when he blew Vickie Weavers head off? There is good and bad in every walk of life. Not all LEOs are good people with a solid moral foundation. My .02.

[Destructo6]

These types of targets are very useful for target or threat identification.

LE Targets offers (may include) sets of cover up hands to paste onto these types of targets. Some cover up hands are empty, holding cell phones, grenades, etc to yield almost limitless variations.

Much better to train a guy to shoot an appropriate threat than to shoot only sillohuettes and hope for the best when he is under stress, would you not agree?

[SPEMack618]

I could possibly see an advantage to targets depicting "normal" gun owners for use in shoot/no-shoot drills.

As in a guy with a gun, but the rifle held down as if he is walking back from his truck after hunting. A target mixed in with an obvious hostile target would make for good training, me thinks.

[North East Redneck]

^^^^ yes. This. Not everyone holding a firearm is a threat. Although these targets, at least the ones I've seen, depict all the subjects as threats.

[SpectreBlofeld]

This is reprehensible, and disgusting. You do NOT train to shoot children, no matter the situation. If I saw someone shoot at paper targets with pictures of children without hesitation or protest, I would assume psychopathic tendencies. If I were in a profession - military, police, whatever - where I was asked to shoot at these targets I would seek to terminate my employment immediately and begin some sort of protest process.

I would rather be shot and killed by a child than to kill one, even in cases of self-defense. I used to be a kid, and therefore can say with experience that kids are dumb. They lack life experience. I can personally recall many, many things I did as a stupid youth that probably should have killed me dead. I was fortunate to survive long enough to get wise to how the world works. When you shoot and kill a kid, you're shooting and killing an innocent who really doesn't know better.

THAT SAID

In the field of warfare, morality is shifted, because the conditions are also shifted. That kid with the gun is no longer a personal problem, he's an enemy combatant that threatens not you, but everyone around you. You may be willing, as I am, to die rather than to shoot a child, but are you going to hesitate to shoot him (or her) when he/she is threatening to kill everyone around you?

My answer is this: Deal with this problem if/when it occurs. DO NOT TRAIN TO SHOOT CHILDREN (who could be holding toy guns) ON SIGHT!!! Why on earth would you train to desensitize yourself against shooting children?? This sort of thing should ALWAYS be a difficult decision one makes in a difficult situation, NOT something you actively train for. Historically speaking, if you find yourself fighting a war in which children and pregnant women are shooting at you, (ahem, Vietnam) it's probably time to rethink the reason you're there. How did it come to this? How did it come to a situation where I'm shooting at expectant mothers and children?

Let me be clear - I would shoot a pregnant woman or child if they ever demonstrated that they were about to kill my own children or loved ones and there was no other way to stop it. It would haunt me to the end of my days and provide plenty of psychological damage. BUT YOU DON'T TRAIN FOR THIS! YOU DON'T DESENSITIZE YOURSELF TO THIS! Because one day - mark my words - someone WILL kill an innocent due to this frakked-up training method. Someone, after spending hours at a shooting range putting holes in pictures of children and expectant mothers, will put real holes in real people that may or may not be actual threats, but they put holes in them anyway because they were trained to. This sort of thing should be the unfortunate, horrible choice that one has to make in the field - not something that becomes standard operating procedure.

[Fishing_Cabin]

first Id like to say, thanks to pax for keeping this civil...

Many folks (from reading this thread) tend to view the appearance as an indicator of if the target is a threat or not. No a pregnant woman is not always a threat. Now a person pointing a firearm at another may be considered a threat. (Need I go back and search threads that how pointing a firearm at another is a threat?)

A threat is a threat, plain and simple... A threat can take many different forms. Male/female. Adult/child. Pregnant/Not-pregnant. Black/asian/white, etc. A threat is still a threat.

I would prefer a realistic target that depicts different type situations. Sure, some of them are not fun to think of or consider, but do happen.

Originally Posted by pax

Plenty of people caught up in a domestic violence cycle turn around and attack the responding officers.

It doesnt just take a domestic violence case to do that. It could be something as simple as a citation, or heck, even a verbal warning to make someone flip out against their view of "government" and it doesnt matter how right or legal the officer is.

While I know some folks find defending yourself against a child (less then 18) as wrong, Wait till you have one who is assaulting you violently. Dont think a child under 18 could not kill you? Your fooling yourself. Same with a pregnant woman, or a grand-dad. Its the threat that matters.

For all the folks complaining about these targets, I havent read a reply yet that discusses how to tell an innocent person from one who would kill you. Is it race? No. Is it tats? No. Is it age? No. Is it pregnancy? No. etc....

As to

Originally Posted by North East Redneck

These targets appear to depict only caucasian people.

You evidently havent heard the repeated complaints from african americans about how a b-27 target is racist against african americans....Yes, a B-27 comes in black, but also comes in a blue sillouette too. I dont see too many blue folks walking around either...

Unfortunatly a target only shows a glimpse of what may be happening. I dont see it as "wrong" having various types of targets depicting various things

[pax]

Originally Posted by SpectreBlofeld

When you shoot and kill a kid, you're shooting and killing an innocent who really doesn't know better.

Yes. Sometimes the best choice SUCKS for everyone involved.

Here's something from a blog I read today. It's about emotionally disturbed persons (EDPs), including people with mental handicaps or impairments. I think it applies here, because you're right: the person holding the gun, killing people, might be someone who "really doesn't know better." That stinks and it's horrible to think that there might not be another way to stop such a person.

Originally Posted by Chiron Blog

We all face the possibility of using force and most of us have thought about the ramifications of using force and come to terms with our own ethics. But on some level, if we ever use force, especially deadly force, we want it to be against a bad person. A murderer or rapist.

A true EDP is not a bad person. With brain chemistry out of balance, his actions are not under his or her own control. Killing an EDP may be necessary for our own survival, it may be justified, but there is no element of justice in it…and we want, maybe need, that element of justice. We want the threat to, in some way, deserve the force.

... Remember here most of all, that self-defense is not about justice. It is about stopping bad things from happening.

It's not about justice. It's about preventing more murders in the only way that will work given the realities of the situation. And it's about making the decision to act, quickly enough for it to do any good.

pax